Linden Labs and IBM team up for virtual teleportation

Linden Labs, creators of virtual world Second Life, and IBM, creators of virtual world OpenSim, have teamed up to enable teleportation between their different worlds.

The feat was carried out in an experimental area of Second Life called Preview Grid. From there they managed to teleport outside of the Second Life world and into OpenSim within a matter of seconds, making a year of work come to fruition.

The experiment is the first step towards potentially having an open standard for individuals and their avatars. Instead of creating a different character for every virtual world you frequent, instead you have one and take it wherever you go.

Colin Parris, vice president of digital conversion at IBM commented:

Interoperability is a key component of the 3D Internet and an important step to enabling individuals and organizations to take advantage of virtual worlds for commerce, collaboration, education, operations and other business applications … Developing this protocol is a key milestone and has the potential to push virtual worlds into the next stage of their evolution.

The results of the research will be handed over to the Second Life Architecture Working Group (AWG), who are over-seeing the development of the Open Grid Protocol. The protocols used will also be released to OpenSim and Second Life users.

Matthew’s Opinion
In terms of virtual worlds like Second Life this is good news, but I think it is limited to worlds like Second Life. I don’t think this is an idea that would be accepted readily in MMO games such as World of Warcraft or City of Heroes.

In those games the idea is to create a different persona and develop it. The teleportation idea is more of a corporate tool, allowing individuals to travel to different worlds maintaining their identity.

The usefulness of teleportation is going to be dependant on how easy it is to integrate into new virtual worlds, people actually identifying it as a positive feature to use and the number of virtual worlds there are that take advantage of it. As interactions between business users become ever-more digital-based, the need for interoperability will grow. Having your company create a digital home world knowing other businesses can send representatives without problems, and regardless of where their avatar was created, is sure to be seen in a positive light.